02 October 2001
Causes of Militant Islam
Emily Yoffe has written an article for Slate in which she attacks the notion that poverty is the root cause of the terrorist acts of 11 September, in response to the predictable claims of the Left that to defeat terrorism, the United States must defeat poverty. She notes that the apparent ringleaders of the 11 September attacks were affluent and well-educated. She further notes a number of poverty-stricken countries in the world that are not riven with militant Islamic fundamentalism. She concludes -- rightly -- that the root cause of terrorism is not income, but a "malignant philosophy."
I picked up this article from Glenn Reynolds' excellent InstaPundit site, although I have a quibble with his characterization of Yoffe's argument: "Terrorism isn't caused by poverty -- rather, the biographies of the terrorists suggest, it is caused by affluence." I don't think one can quite draw the conclusion terrorism is caused by affluence because its leaders and organizers are relatively affluent and well-educated, since elites of most political movements tend to be more prosperous and/or better educated than the footsoldiers!
We do know that the militant Islamic movement has found its greatest support among the poor and uneducated people of certain parts of the world (North Africa, the Near East, and Central Eurasia mainly -- places where Western philosophy has never spread and/or taken hold). In places where Islam is the prevalent religion, poverty is rampant, and illiteracy is the norm (literacy rate in Afghanistan 31%, Pakistan 42%, Sudan 46%), the population seem particularly susceptible to militant Islamic teachings. That is not to say that the Left is right in its claims that poverty drives militant Islam or that a "war on poverty" in these areas would be regarded as anything but further Western intrusion, but that the circumstance of poverty seems at least to provide a breeding ground for militant Islamic agitation.
The militant Islamic movement is probably driven, more than anything else, by its ideological differences with the West, something David Pryce-Jones has noted most recently here and here, and something Thomas Sowell noted in an op-ed today (and something that Bernard Lewis writes about here, for those who just can't read enough about this). Poverty and lack of education produce a large stock of potential footsoldiers in certain parts of the world, as Yoffe points out in her fifth paragraph, but even that is not a sufficient condition. Yoffe's significant contribution is to note the composition of the political leadership of militant Islamic terrorism (leadership, incidentally, remaining a greatly understudied subject in political science departments). Understanding that the elite leaders of militant Islam are well-organized, well-financed, and relatively well-educated is one critical component of knowing this enemy -- and something that the Left could stand to learn.
[Posted @ 12:06 PM CST]
